UNC

Iheoma U. Iruka

February 9, 2022

Iheoma U. Iruka is a research professor in the Department of Public Policy within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and founding director of the Equity Research Action Coalition within the FPG Child Development Institute. She studies how to promote the health, wealth, and educational excellence of minoritized children and children from low-income households.

Sayan Banerjee

December 15, 2021

Sayan Banerjee is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. He studies emerging patterns in large random systems.

Anna Fraser

December 1, 2021

Anna Fraser is PhD student in the Department of Chemistry within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She designs, synthesizes, and characterizes polymers for water purification.

Connecting Humans and Computers

November 19, 2021

For most of her life, Ayana Monroe has been fascinated by how people and computers connect — a field called human-computer interaction. Now, as a UNC-Chapel Hill junior and Chancellor’s Science Scholar, she engages in research to improve how we use technology to acquire information. She wants to teach the next generation to do the same.

Setting the Art World Ablaze

November 18, 2021

Upon discovering a series of political cartoons mocking artists in 18th- and 19th-century France in 2010, UNC-Chapel Hill art historian Kathryn Desplanque couldn’t stop searching for them. Now, she has amassed more than 500 and is using them to redefine how we think about art and the artist in modern-day society.

The Sanctity of Cherokee

November 15, 2021

As a result of systemic oppression, there are fewer than 200 native Cherokee speakers in North Carolina. To keep the language alive and pass it to the next generation, UNC-Chapel Hill researcher and Eastern Band Cherokeean citizen Benjamin Frey has teamed up with computer scientists Mohit Bansal and Shiyue Zhang to create a new translation model and grow the literary library of works available in Cherokee.

Anna Geib

October 27, 2021

Anna Geib is a junior double-majoring in exercise and sport science within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences and nutrition within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies how diet and exercise improve the quality and length of life in different populations and is particularly interested in how it can mitigate the risks of space flight.

A Project of Her Own

October 20, 2021

Most UNC-Chapel Hill PhD students oversee their own research projects for their dissertations. But Kriddie Whitmore did it in a foreign country — and with the added challenges of a language barrier, bad weather, and limited equipment. This past summer, Whitmore traveled to the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, tackling their demands with incredible tenacity and creativity.

Putting Skill to Work

October 18, 2021

Nichola Lowe spotted the gaps in the U.S. workforce long before the pandemic shined a light on them. She’s spent the last 15 years studying how employees develop and use skills at work, and how employers encourage development of those skills. Most recently, she’s written a book on the topic and is using lessons from the pandemic to drive her current research.

Sifting Through Schoolyard Memories

October 14, 2021

This summer, UNC-Chapel Hill PhD student Colleen Betti and 80 volunteers rushed to uncover a historic schoolyard that was about to be paved over and transformed into a parking lot. Their mission: to illuminate the overlooked, everyday lives of African American school children from the 19th century.